


This is our Hope

by grayimperia



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 15:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11164494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: [Major V3 Spoilers]The two chosen survivors stagger out of the cage and into the rest of their lives.Or Saihara and Yumeno watch Maki kill someone on T.V.





	This is our Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for the entirety of V3.

Saihara’s in a crowded mall, calculating soap prices in his head when Yumeno tugs on his sleeve and points out the shop window to a poster covering the entirety of a distant wall. He’s never been so uncomfortable to see his own face. 

“We should leave,” Yumeno says rubbing her eyes with one hand, her other still clinging to his sleeve. “I don’t feel like being recognized today, and I don’t have the MP for an invisibility spell.” 

“Let’s just buy this stuff and eat at home then,” he says pulling the cheaper soap from the shelf. He pauses and looks down at her. “Do we have anything at home?”

“Uh,” Yumeno places a finger on her bottom lip. “Left-over takeout?” 

Saihara’s about to respond that they should really learn how to cook, really make it a habit to stock their apartment with actual food, and really stop living off of things that can be delivered to their doorstep when a laugh catches his ear. A group of teenagers standing in a circle at the end of the aisle are whispering conspiratorially, loudly giggling, and sending not-so-subtle looks in his direction. Saihara remembers why they don’t make it a habit to do anything that involves leaving their apartment. 

He pulls his hat down lower over his eyes. Yumeno glances behind her. “I can buy everything,” she says taking the bag from his hand. “I’ll meet you outside or something.”

“No,” he says. “I can do it. It’s not fair to make you—”

She puts a hand up and shrugs. “It’s not a big deal. Besides, I’d take buying groceries over…” she nods in the direction of the poster. “Over whatever that is.” 

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Me, too.”

-

He had done the math about a week after the game had ended when the money came pouring in, and both of them had only been able to stare open-mouthed at the sheer number of zeroes on the near comically large amount that had been awarded to each of them. When the shock faded and he found himself able to think again, Saihara had sat down at the table in their small apartment and began writing out his rough estimations for all the expenses they would need for the rest of their lives. 

Yumeno had slumped down next to him, her eyes wearily glancing over his jumbled hand writing. “So…” she said after a lengthy pause in his hurried writing, “if we put all our money together… then?”

Saihara put his hand to his chin and glanced over his notes again. “I think that if we’re careful,” he furrowed his eyebrows. “We may be able to live on it for, well, ideally until we die.” 

She nods. “That’s good.” She leans her head against his arm. “So we don’t have to get jobs then?”

He shakes his head. “Not unless you want to.”

Yumeno pulls a face. “I don’t.”

Saihara distantly remembers once being excited about the idea of finally starting a career—of getting to be a real detective. His mental image of his younger self with stars in his eyes over solving real grown-up mysteries never existed, but it’s all he has of his childhood. He did get to be a real-fake detective for a while—he idly supposes he still technically is one—and the version of his childhood self dreamed up by network executives will have to be satisfied enough with that.

Instead, as a rich, teenage, high-school drop-out, he finds the idea terrifying. So he says, “Me neither,” and leans his head again Yumeno’s.

After a moment she says, “if we do ever run out, I’ll cast a fortune spell… but it usually takes up a lot of MP.”

He smiles. “I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t come to that.”

-

With his hat and the hood of his jacket pulled up, only Yumeno gets recognized on the train home. It could be worse. It’s two young boys—Saihara guesses middle school age when he risks a glance from the under the brim of his hat—exchanging excited looks with each other before they finally approach. Saihara turns his face away, attempting to blend in with his seat as the two boys stand in front of them, brimming with nervous energy and pushing at each other to get the other to speak first. 

Yumeno’s looking distant, the bag containing their groceries in her lap and her gaze directed at someplace far away, far past the children in front of her and the walls of the train. One of them finally says, “You were on DanganRonpa, right?” and her eyes slowly move to them. The boy continues. “You’re Yumeno Himiko, right?”

She shrugs. “I guess.”

“I-I knew it! You were my favorite, even from the beginning.” 

The other boy elbows his shoulder. “That’s not true—you liked the other girl! The one who got strangled.”

He ignores his friend. “How did you decide your talent? When I get older, I’m going to audition, but I haven’t picked what mine would be yet.”

Yumeno plays with the handles of the bag. “Dunno why I picked it,” she says quietly. “Just did.” 

“Well, magician’s pretty cool!” He smiles. “I mean, just imagine how awesome your execution would have been if—”

The world is merciful and the train slows to stop. Saihara places his hand on Yumeno’s arm. “I think this is our stop, today,” he says in a low voice and she nods. 

“Ah-wait!” One of the boys shouts. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a notebook with Monokuma’s face on it. “Will you sign this?”

She does and waves goodbye, and they take the long walk home in silence. 

-

Yumeno does know why she picked her talent. 

After they had been escorted from the cage and to the DanganRonpa headquarters, they had sat through paperwork and people talking at them and photo-ops, and when asked if there was anything else, Yumeno spoke up and said: “Can I have my audition video?”

The people had been surprised at the request, but after a few minutes of sorting through stored film they hand her a CD with the words “Seasons 53: Chosen Cast Auditions” written on the sleek transparent cover. 

She holds it close to her chest. 

Yumeno watches it for the first time with Saihara before they moved into together. Her parents are absolute strangers to her, and she only realized with a dull, aching dread when taken back home to her friends and family that her old memories are not returning. People she’s never seen before greet her and welcome her home and take her to what they say is her house and show her what they say is her room and she immediately falls asleep in what they say is her bed. 

When she wakes up that first morning, Yumeno takes the CD and just stares at it. It takes all of her will power to not snap the only clue to who she was over her knee right then and there. She hasn’t even gotten out of bed and finds herself shaking. 

Saihara—good, reliable Saihara—had already texted her good morning like he said he would. 

Yumeno skips the hellos and asks him for his address. He responds and she shows up at his door, in her strange new—old—clothes and the CD pressed to her chest. 

Apparently Saihara really does live with only his uncle, who sits quietly, drinking tea at his dining table and doesn’t ask who she is or why she’s there. Saihara pauses awkwardly in front of him, Yumeno unconsciously hiding behind him. “Uh, this is Yumeno-san, from the show,” he says looking at his feet. “We’re, uh, going up to my room, I guess…”

The man nods, not looking up from his newspaper, spread across the table. “Alright. Just let me know if you need anything, Shuu.”

Saihara noticeably stiffens at the address but gives a curt nod of his head in acknowledgement. 

They pause outside the door to Saihara’s room, and he shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I, uh,” he says, gaze trained on the floor. “I started removing some of it last night, but… there’s just so much, so, well…” he bites his lip. Yumeno has no idea what he’s talking about until he lets out a sigh, and says “I guess you can see for yourself…” and pushes the door open.

His room is small and reasonably neat and absolutely every surface is coated with DanganRonpa merchandise. An army of figurines line his desk, surrounding his black and white notebooks decorated with the bear that made their lives a living hell. Yumeno can’t spot a single piece of wall that’s not covered in a poster of Monokuma or a girl with long purple hair. The girl with long purple hair also makes an appearance on stickers plastered on his window and the back of a laptop on his bed as well as a variety of plush toys that have evidently been pushed off of his bed in a heap. 

Yumeno just stares open mouthed.

Saihara runs a hand through his hair, face flushed in embarrassment. “There was more,” he says and jerks his chin towards a closet. “I shoved a lot of it in there, but… if I get rid of everything, I don’t think I’ll have any stuff left.”

Yumeno isn’t processing his words. She’s just staring. “You… really liked DanganRonpa…” 

“My uncle, uh,” Saihara says. “Told me that DanganRonpa stuff was the only presents I ever liked… so whenever I had a birthday or my… my parents wanted to get me anything or I had any money…” he gestures vaguely. “I guess this just happened.”

Yumeno looks down at the CD in her hands. They both already knew that the video said being in a killing game was a dream come true for him. With the evidence that everything on the CD was likely true staring her dead in the face, Yumeno finds her resolve suddenly failing. 

She doesn’t know what she’d been hoping for, and she says “Maybe we shouldn’t watch it…”

Saihara follows her gaze. “Ah… well, we don’t have to… oh!” he suddenly starts over towards his bed and opens his laptop. “There’s something I wanted to show you.”

Yumeno sits next to him and catches a glance of his laptop background—a rather risqué picture of the girl with purple hair. She blinks. Saihara reddens. “N-not that! Uh,” he opens an internet tab and pointedly stretches it out to cover the image.

As he hurriedly begins typing, Yumeno somehow finds herself smiling. “You were kind of a weird guy.”

He shakes his head with as much self-deprecating humor as he can muster. “I know. That’s not the weirdest picture I’m going to have to delete either.”

Even though she’s prying into his dirty laundry while her own sits in her hands, terrifying her, Yumeno can’t help the curiosity overtaking her. “What is the weirdest picture?”

Saihara blushes even harder. 

Yumeno asks, “Is it porn?”

“N-no! I-it’s—” he stammers and he works his mouth wordlessly, attempting to find the words to justify himself. He sighs in defeat. “I-I’ll show you later… maybe…”

She nods. “But you do have DanganRonpa porn, right?”

His expression and a folder icon innocuously marked ‘boring school stuff’ answer her question even as Saihara huffs and finally brings up what he wanted to show her. 

It’s a fan site. Saihara begins explaining and clicking on things as her eyes flicker over pictures of their horrified faces, stills from executions, and a variety of comments bemoaning and praising the deaths of her friends in equal measure. “Apparently our season did really well,” he says as Yumeno reads a comment that begins ‘ _soooo many cute bois this season hoping 4 at least one to survive ^_^ sucks when only the uglies_ —’ and has to stop when Saihara clicks to a page about fan events. 

“So, ah…” he clears his throat. “Amami-kun was really popular since he’d been on the show so many times, and, um, some fans are holding a memorial for him.” 

Yumeno blinks. “Do… you want us to go?” 

He shakes his head. “Not really. Look here,” he hovers over a part of the description. “Apparently they’re going to watch episodes from his past seasons and things like that, but, ah, here it says that…” he lets out a sigh. 

Yumeno reads the words he can’t say. Kiibo is going to be there to ‘honor his deceased classmate and talk about season 54.’

“We’d probably just get mobbed if we went, but,” Saihara frowns, determination spreading across his face. “We might also be able to find out something about Harukawa-san.” 

“And we’d get to see Kiibo again even if…” she clenches her hands into fists, letting her nails bite at her palms. “They probably reprogrammed him already…”

Saihara lets out the biting comment before he can stop himself. “It’s what they do.” 

“But—” she isn’t sure how to say it, but Saihara’s looking at her and she’s looking at the CD. “But… they made us better people,” she grips it tighter. “That’s why we don’t want to see how we were before… because we were worse.”

There is silence, and Saihara, for all his bitterness and resentment, can’t say anything as the very proof of her words surrounds them, piled up in every corner of his bedroom. Then he says very quietly, “they still ruined our lives.”

Yumeno doesn’t fight him because she realizes that he needs to blame someone, and as she leans against his arm, she also realizes she doesn’t want that person to be himself. He’s all she has left, and she hands him the CD. 

Saihara looks at her with raised eyebrows. “Are you sure?” 

She nods. “Yeah. I can’t hide from it forever, and,” she presses herself closer to him, “and I shouldn’t run from myself. Need to face my emotions and all of that.”

They watch the CD.

Akamatsu appears first and Saihara looks ill. 

They both know what’s coming, and Yumeno squeezes his hand. Yumeno’s still watching when she says. “You can still love her, y’know.” She repositions herself, now leaning all of her weight against his side. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

His eyes flicker down to her and a small, tried smile finds its way on to his pale face.

The screen fades to black before whirring back to life to show Hoshi fiddling with a cigarette. 

Iruma, Shinguji, Tojo, and a second viewing of Momota that Saihara spend the duration of biting the inside of his cheek. 

Then it’s Tenko, who looks at the camera and says she wants to be a cool fighting girl who can punch out anyone who tries to mess with her. Yumeno stares hard at her face as the dead girl on screen looks conflicted, beginning to say she wants a boyfriend before changing the word halfway through to ‘love interest.’ She looks confused at her own words as the camera clicks off. 

It’s short. Too short, and Yumeno suddenly finds herself desperate for more. 

Saihara’s staring at Yumeno and Yumeno’s staring at the black screen, still processing Tenko’s confusion in her own confused thoughts, and a disgruntled looking Gonta’s audition passes by without a word from either of them. 

Saihara’s audition begins to play, and the boy in question grimaces and begins to talk over himself. “Her feelings for you were real…” he says. “You shouldn’t doubt that.”

She finds herself running Tenko’s words through her head. “R… right,” she mumbles. Saihara squeezes her hand. 

“Do you want to stop?” he asks. Ouma’s face fills the screen and he nervously stammers out how he wants to be a leader to unite everyone in one breath. 

It’s just her, Maki, and Angie left. 

Yumeno whispers out a soft no as she’s suddenly looking at herself. 

A different her is squinting up at the camera and says, “We can be anything we want, yeah? Well I want to have magic powers,” she huffs and crosses her arms. “This show can do that, right? So I want you to defy the laws of science and give me magic. Then your show’d be real cool or whatever.” She yawns. “Also I wouldn’t mind going out early, long as I got to try out some magic first. That’d be totally worth it. Yeah, I wouldn’t even mind being the first victim or whatever. In fact, I’d kinda prefer it to having to go through the whole thing.” 

Yumeno curls her knees up to her chest. After a moment, Saihara hesitantly places an arm around her. 

The Yumeno on screen finishes by looking up at the camera with half lidded eyes, saying, “Is that it? Am I done?” before she fades away. 

They watch silently as Angie appears to explain this idea she had for an imaginary island. 

Yumeno doesn’t say anything for the rest of the night other than how much she doesn’t want to go back home to the house of the girl so lazy she wanted to die. 

Later, Saihara endures another awkward interaction with his uncle to tell him that she wants to stay the night. Saihara sleeps on his uncle’s couch, and Yumeno sleeps in his weird room, surrounded by pictures of Monokuma. 

-

One night over take-out dinner, Yumeno starts doing card tricks. 

She holds up the deck to him across the table. “Pick one.”

Saihara raises an eyebrow. “When did you get a deck of cards?”

Yumeno waves a finger. “A mage never reveals her secrets.”

He sighs and pulls out a card. She frowns. “What?”

“Not that card.”

-

Yumeno sometimes dreams about the day Kiibo and Maki decided to sacrifice themselves. When they all decided they wanted to live too much and were good little pawns and followed Shirogane’s plan. 

Shirogane waves goodbye like a pageant queen before she is bounced around on piano keys, dropped from a spiked vine, boiled in a caldron, stung by swarms of bugs, sent to space, and then finally crushed in what Yumeno would later learn was the final punishment for all masterminds. Not a hair was out of place on her pretty pink wig through it all. She was brutalized, beaten, dead, and victorious. 

Kiibo began talking about hope, and confetti shot from places unknown, and it was all a colorful blur to Yumeno’s tearstained eyes. 

The screens around the room sparked to life in bright, neon colors, echoing Kiibo’s strange soliloquy that hope had won. Maki stood stalk still at her podium, arms crossed and face pale. She had accepted her fate. Saihara had dropped to his hands and knees at this point, his tears falling freely, splattering on the ground, his body wracked by sobs. Yumeno braced herself against the railings of her own podium, knowing she was not far behind him. 

Maki’s silent form stood out in the chaos even when the confetti stopped and strange people surged into the room to escort out the winners. Yumeno felt her legs give out from under her then. 

She and Saihara were taken to a waiting room, both still sniffling. She remembered Maki’s stoicism in face of her impending torture. She remembered Kiibo’s bizarre faith in a nebulous concept fueling him forward. 

She looked at Saihara shaking next to her. She looked at her own pitiful reflection in the squeaky clean floor tiles. There were pieces of confetti in her hair. 

Survival of the emotionally weakest. 

-

Yumeno drags her feet as much as she can in leaving Saihara’s uncle’s house. It was the third day since they had been freed from the cage. 

She makes herself somewhat useful, helping Saihara pack up all of his old self’s collection of DanganRonpa merchandise—or at least making conversation with him from the comfort of his bed while he does it. 

His uncle comes by with cardboard boxes that apparently he had been asked for. The man looks around at the newly stripped walls and says, “Never thought I’d see this stuff go. Turning over a new leaf?”

Saihara worries the poster in his hands. “Something like that,” he says to the ground. 

“Well,” he says forming a half-smile. “Glad to see you’re focusing on something. You’ve, ah, been through a lot.”

Saihara gives him a strained smile in confirmation. 

His uncle nods and leaves without another word. Yumeno stares after him. “At least your uncle seems nice,” she offers. 

Saihara turns his back to her, stuffing the poster in a newly arrived box. “He’s not that nice. He let me sign up for a killing game.”

Yumeno blinks. She had yet to think about it that way. “Oh… yeah,” she said slowly. “I guess my parents did, too.”

“That reminds me,” he says. “Did you ever tell them that you came here yesterday?”

She frowns. “No.”

“Have they called to check-up on you?”

“No…” Yumeno realizes all of a sudden that perhaps her real parents are not as kind and attentive as the fake ones stuffing her memories. 

Saihara seems to realize this at the same time. “Yumeno-san, ah, I…” he turns back to her. “Um, you can stay here as long as you want, but,” he reaches idly for a hat that isn’t there. “Maybe you should call them anyway? Even if… they haven’t called you?”

She shakes her head and finally pulls back the covers on his bed. “No, I need to go home today,” she hops to the ground, her clothes wrinkled from the day before. “I’m…” the words seem so strange to her, “I’m going back to school tomorrow.”

Saihara’s eyes widen. 

She shrugs at him in response. “We have to go back eventually, right?” 

“I guess?” his eyebrows raise and he asks the question in such a helpless way that Yumeno just stops. Then he says, “You’re right…we just need to… go back to normal. That’s what we do now.” He turns back to the boxes. 

She walks across the room, pausing at his side. “I tried casting a memory spell last night, but nothing worked… so do you have any memories of ‘normal?’”

“No,” it comes out chocked. From just his voice, she knows he’s on the verge of tears. “I can’t remember anything.”

Yumeno hugs one of his skinny arms. “Me neither. But we should face ourselves or something. Stop running and all that.”

He shakes his head. “No. I think the problem isn’t that we haven’t run far enough.” Something in him snaps. Saihara wrenches his arm out of her grasp and waves it across his room, taking in everything he’s tried to destroy. “Look at this! Look at how much of a freak I was! Yesterday, you were completely right! They made us these amazing people so we could all kill each other, and now everyone we cared about is dead and we have to go back to this! We killed Harukawa-san for this! She’s going to die so we can be these people that we hate! A-and everything is on _fucking_ T.V.! Everybody got to watch me on T.V. realize what a freak I was, and—”

He is crying now and begins to ramble about his own self-hatred. Saihara’s pacing and waving his arms and his words and sobs become more indistinguishable from one another until he just stops and sinks to the ground, knees pressed up to his chest and hands pulling at his hair.

Yumeno drops down on her knees and wraps her arms around his waist. He doesn’t respond. She had wondered when she first arrived how he had managed to get straight to renovating his room and searching for information about their friends instead of wallowing in his own misery like she had been. 

She doesn’t know what to say. She’s still in the process of learning how to understand her emotions—dealing with Saihara’s is a step she doesn’t even know how to begin to take. But Saihara’s the only thing she has any real memories of so she holds on to him and he doesn’t push her away. 

Time stretches on and he’s stopped trying to form words. Yumeno’s choice words of comfort are: “Everything sucks.”

He lets out a chocked laugh. 

Then Yumeno hears a noise at the door and looks up in time to see his uncle has just arrived at his open door to ask about the noise. The man looks at Saihara curled in on himself with his shoulders shaking and then back at Yumeno. He gives her a half-smile and an awkward nod and shuffles away. 

She supposes she isn’t the only one who doesn’t know how to handle Saihara’s emotions. 

-

Saihara would have nights in their apartment where he just would not sleep. He’d stay up writing notes to himself about their budget, read through any of the few books he had for a third or fourth time, and relentlessly clean the kitchen neither of them ever cooked food in. Mostly he just sits on their couch and thinks.

Yumeno once caught him doing it and declared that him getting too caught up in his own head wasn’t healthy. He finds it hard to disagree with her but also finds himself doing it night after night. They both know it’s the quiet moments where he’s the most likely to break down, but neither of them can say it aloud. There are a lot of things they have trouble saying aloud.

Saihara stays up and counts the ceiling tiles in their living room and thinks about how fourteen other people had to die for him to have the luxury to do so. 

He thinks about how he completely cut off contact with his family when he was just plain forced to confront the realization that he had no idea who they were. 

He thinks about how the old Saihara Shuuichi did die the second he was accepted into the game and how that’s exactly what he wanted. 

He thinks about Kaede and how she would know what to do and make everything better and wouldn’t be staring at her goddamn ceiling having an existential crisis on a regular basis. 

Yumeno stumbles out of her room with bleary eyes one night when he’s in a particularly potent fit of self-loathing. 

She rubs at her eyes. “‘re you hungry, too?” she slurs.

Saihara opens his mouth. He intends to lie when he finds himself saying: “No… I was just…” he looks around for an excuse then settles on: “I couldn’t sleep.”

Yumeno nods. She shuffles over to the kitchen. A few moments pass and he hears a groan. “All we have are those weird dessert things from last night.” 

“I liked those.”

He sees her face appear in the doorway, pulling a look of disgust. “They were gross.” 

Saihara sits up and finds himself managing to laugh. “Then leave them for me.”

She huffs but moves towards him, resting her folded arms on the back of the couch. “What do I do now?” she asks. “I can’t sleep and all we have to eat tomorrow are your gross dessert things. I don’t even have enough MP to cast a sleep spell on myself.”

Saihara smiles softly at her pouting then has an odd, melancholy thought. He stands. “You can’t sleep either?” she nods in assent, eyes warily following him as he moves to the slight open space between their kitchen and living room. “Then come here.” 

He sits on the ground and gestures for her to follow suit. When she does, he lets out a tired laugh. “Nothing—and I mean nothing—made me more exhausted than training with Momota-kun. So,” he looks at her, “train with me?” 

She puffs out her cheeks. Then both know she’s going to say yes, but Yumeno almost feels like she has to protest. “It’ll help me sleep?” 

He nods, and Saihara does pushups at four in the morning until his arms give out from under him and Yumeno’s fallen asleep on the ground.

When she wakes up, Saihara has already braved the grocery store alone to buy food for the morning. She rubs her bleary eyes and says tomorrow night they’re doing Neo-Aikido exercises. 

-

Yumeno tries going back to school. She decided to push it off another day, so she and Saihara could have their first day at attempting to be normal teenagers together. She stood next to him the night after he broke down in front of her as he told his uncle he wanted to go back. He then bit his lip and asked what the name of his school was and how he was supposed to get there. As soon as he asked the questions, Yumeno blinked. “Oh, I guess I should look that stuff up for me, too…”

The morning at her own home that she had barely spent a day in was surreal. A woman who she assumed was her mother mentioned some of her friends had come by the other day asking for her. There were no questions as to where she had been. She had returned from a killing game and disappeared for almost two days, and even as she told herself that answering questions would just be exhausting, Yumeno felt a growing pit in her stomach. 

She puts on what she assumes is her old school uniform and follows the directions she had printed out at Saihara’s house to the school they guessed was hers. She remembers that when Saihara had taken to the internet to find out what school she went to, he had grimaced and told her not to look up her own name. 

Yumeno begins the walk to school and feels the people she passes by stop and point at her and whisper and she keeps looking at the directions, gripping the paper tighter in her small hands. 

She gets on a train and keeps her eyes focused on the door in front of her, ready to bolt because there are other students with uniforms like hers and they all keep sneaking looks and darting back to their friends. Then someone finally approaches and says, “Yumeno Himiko?” 

Yumeno looks up and squints at the strange girl in a uniform that matches hers, and dumbly realizes that maybe the girl knows her from the show or maybe she’s someone she forgot. Yumeno has no way to tell whether any of the people are staring at her because she is their classmate or because they had seen her almost die on T.V.

Yumeno says, “Do I know you?” and the girl breaks into a smile. 

“No, but you’re in the class above me,” she says. “We never really talked, but I saw you on DanganRon—”

She cuts her off. “I think you have the wrong person,” and she turns back towards gazing at the door. 

The girl looks bemused, still trying to be friendly, still giving her a half-smile. “You’re not—”

“No,” Yumeno says dully. “You’re confusing me with someone else.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Ah, I see, well,” she nods and Yumeno knows she doesn’t believe her for a second. “Sorry to bother you then.”

Yumeno gets off at the same stop as the girl and follows her to the same school and she knows she’s idling by the front office so she hears her mumble out, “I’m Yumeno Himiko. I’m coming back to school today and need my schedule.” 

Yumeno knows her fate is sealed once the words leave her mouth, and she walks through the halls, hunching her shoulders as every single person she brushes past turns to stare at her. 

When she gets to her real class, she slumps in a desk and thinks it’s funny how everyone in the game called each other classmates. And Yumeno begins to imagine what it would be like to attend class with all her dead friends as her real classmates pour into the room and stare at her like a zoo animal. 

Class mercifully starts just as someone is beginning to ask her about how she’s “One of those talented people now.”

Yumeno reaches into her old backpack and pulls out her old notebook and sees pages of notes she has no memory of taking in her own handwriting. She flips through page after page and something in her becomes frantic as she is again painfully reminded just how little she knows about her own life. She quickly turns through all the pages and runs her eyes over all her scribbled writing, willing herself to remember anything real about her life before the game. 

The teacher is saying things that enter one ear and leave the other, and Yumeno suddenly has no idea why she thought coming here was so important. Not twenty minutes have passed in her first day back at school before she grabs her bag and rushes out of the room. 

She hides in a stall in the first girls’ bathroom she sees and texts Saihara that she can’t do it. 

Yumeno doesn’t know what she’s expecting. Words of encouragement, maybe a story from his own experience or a reprimand not to use her phone in class. Instead he asks for the address of her school and says he’s on his way. 

She sits on the floor of the girls’ bathroom staring at the door, willing for him to appear. Just when she’s contemplating using a spell, her phone buzzes and he asks which girls’ bathroom she’s hiding in. 

She looks to her phone about the same time that she hears a knock on the door, and a soft voice call out, “Yumeno-san?” 

Saihara’s standing there in his old school uniform with his old hat pulled just so to hide his eyes, and Yumeno doesn’t say a word before springing up to grab one of his hands with both of hers and pull him to sit on the floor with her.

He’s clearly a bit uncomfortable to be in a girls’ bathroom in a school he doesn’t even go to, but doesn’t protest as he leans against the smooth tile wall. Neither of them dare mention the last time they were in a girls’ bathroom together. 

She’s quiet for a while then breathes out, “Sorry for making you leave your first day…”

Saihara’s mouth forms a tight line and he pauses for a moment before saying carefully, “It’s okay. It, ah,” he tugs at his hat. “It wasn’t going very well anyway.”

Yumeno plays with his fingers, pressing at his knuckles and seeing his pale skin light up red at even the slightest pressure. “I dunno why I thought this was a good idea. Couldn’t even make it through one class.” 

Saihara bites his lip. Silence stretches between them before he eventually finds the words to say, “You did better than me.” She glances up at him, and he says very quietly, “I couldn’t even make it out of my room.” He takes a breath. “This is the first time I’ve left my house since the game ended, actually.”

“Oh…” and she has no idea what to say to that. 

“I didn’t even notice how afraid I was to leave until this morning,” he shakes his head. “I just… I just stared at myself in the mirror and wondered if I’d be more recognizable with or without the hat, and I kept putting it on and taking it back off and thinking about why I stopped wearing it in the first place, and then I saw what time it was and realized that I’d been stalling because I just…” he lets out a sigh and looks down at his lap. “I just couldn’t do it.”

He looks so defeated that Yumeno knows she has to say something. The first thing to come to mind is: “I wish I could wear my hat… I don’t think the dress code here allows it.” 

He smiles warily. “You should cast a spell to change it.”

“Nah,” she says. “Too much effort. Besides… I don’t think I’m going to try again with… school. I’ve had enough of being in a school.” 

Saihara leans his head back against the wall. “It had to be a school, didn’t it?” 

She pulls her knees up to her chest. “Yeah… hey, Saihara?” she says. “Why did we call each other classmates in the game? We never attended class.”

For some reason her specific criticism of the killing game strikes him as the funniest thing he’s ever heard. 

Saihara clamps a hand over his mouth to subdue the sudden flood of laughter that over takes him, and for a split second Yumeno’s worried he’s crying again from the way his shoulders begin to shake. He laughs and laughs and Yumeno finds herself smiling when he finally wipes his eyes and says he has no idea. “It’s so stupid,” he says. “But we all did it… God…”

They sit in an odd moment of happiness on the floor of a girl’s bathroom in Yumeno’s high school when they hear a bell and the sounds of students milling about creeps through the door separating them from the world. 

Saihara stiffens. “I… should leave.”

Yumeno stands, pulling him up with her. “I’m coming, too, but,” she puts a finger to her chin. “I don’t have enough MP for a teleportation spell, so…” 

He coughs. “R-right.” Saihara tugs his hat down as far over his eyes as he can, and, with Yumeno’s hand in his, pushes the door open.

Eyes are immediately upon them for the awkward situation of being a boy and a girl, hand-in-hand, leaving a public bathroom, and Saihara’s differing school uniform attracts stares like a flame in darkness. 

Of course, being noticed for his odd clothing is nothing compared to when almost the entirety of Yumeno’s high school seems to collectively realize that both of the survivors from one of the most popular seasons of DanganRonpa to date are in their school. 

His legs are longer than hers and he’s moving at such a brisk pace that Yumeno finds herself nearly running to keep up. She doesn’t complain, though. The stares from every passing person when she entered were one thing, but now with Saihara Shuuichi, the surprise protagonist detective, by her side, they are being swarmed by excited and pushy strangers all eager for their own chances to die on T.V. in hordes. 

There are so many people, and all of them are talking, and Saihara keeps pulling her faster and faster through the crowds closing in around them, not saying a word as he moves through them. Yumeno dimly wonders as a group of girls actually scream at them why he thought wearing a hat would prevent this. 

-

Yumeno and Saihara sit on their couch and fixatedly stare at his laptop. The first episode of DanganRonpa season 54 is about to start. Maki’s second killing game is about to start. 

After a bit of research, Saihara had discovered that after about season twenty, they began doing themed seasons every other year. This time around, the idea seems to be that everyone is darker and edgier, and thus all the students are given appropriately violent talents to brutalize each other with. 

Maki’s almost hilariously stereotypical assassin clothing doesn’t raise a single eyebrow among the assembled group. 

Kiibo isn’t there, but the two of them came to the silent acknowledgement that even if he did succeed in winning the show, he probably still would not be allowed to leave. In a way, it’s an odd blessing as it means he and Maki won’t be in a position to potentially kill each other. 

The group begins slowly introducing themselves to each other, and Yumeno frowns. “Does every season start this way?” 

Saihara nods. “From what I’ve read, everything should be pretty formulaic. Which also means one of them is the mastermind, and there should also be a traitor.”

“So Harukawa needs to watch out for two people?”

“No,” he says. “The traitor’s always secretly a good guy.”

“Always?” she raises her eyebrows.

“Like, I said,” he crosses his arms. “It’s pretty formulaic.”

They watch in silence for a bit. A girl who identifies herself as the Ultimate Forger has bright bubblegum pink hair with one strand that sticks straight up in the air. She and the Ultimate Arsonist slowly take their time to explore the setting—a demented carnival themed school for some reason that escapes Saihara—before everyone meanders to the gym to find out they’re in a killing game. 

The first motive is that the killer will be able to leave the school with all their previous crimes erased from the public memory. The students exchange meaningful, worried glances as dramatic music plays. 

Yumeno snorts. “That’s just cheating,” she says. “They don’t have to do anything special for that.”

“Well, they will have killed someone,” he shrugs. “So they’ll have committed at least one crime even if nobody in the outside world cares.”

Maki distances herself from the group even faster than she did in their game. 

No one tries to convince her otherwise. No one, not even the bubblegum pink haired protagonist, tries to seize leadership of the group. 

The show goes on. Yumeno falls asleep and is only awoken by Saihara nudging her to deliver the news that there’s already a first victim by the end of the episode. It’s not Maki, and Saihara still has enough of his rusty detective skills to deduce she’s not the killer so neither of them particularly care. 

“They go out of their way to make sure the games usually last longer than one trial,” he says quickly. “So she should be safe until the next motive.” He furrows his eyebrows. “Also the killer’s really obvious.” 

“Hmm,” Yumeno hums in agreement. “So who’s the mastermind? I’m betting on the arsonist.”

He smirks. “Our chosen heroine’s closest companion?”

She sleepily nods. “Yeah. Either him or the serial killer.” She frowns. “Also how is ‘serial killer’ a talent?”

Saihara shakes his head. “I’m not sure, but apparently they’ve done it before.”

“…this show is weird.”

He laughs and closes his laptop. “Did I ever tell you,” he begins, “about in one of the earliest seasons, there was a guy who was just a regular person throughout the entire game, and when he found out he used to be someone with implanted talents he almost ‘gave into despair’ because he was afraid of his normal self disappearing?”

Yumeno leans back on the couch. “Can’t relate.” 

“No,” he laughs again. “Me neither.”

-

Yumeno kissed him once. 

With his hat and hood pulled down over his head and a scarf wound high around her face, they had gone to a traveling magician’s show. Yumeno spent the entire performance whispering critiques about how a real mage would go about doing things, but seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. 

They walked home under the starlit sky, Yumeno casually telling stories of her past exploits as a mage training under her master. The fact that every word out of her mouth is a lie implanted by a team of T.V. producers doesn’t seem important. 

In a pause in their conversation, under a street lamp, Saihara looks up. “It’s starting to snow,” he says. “We should hurry home.”

Yumeno doesn’t move. Instead, she simply stares at him with a strange concentration. “Saihara,” she says slowly. “Was this a date?”

He blinks. “No?”

She regards him, something unreadable crossing over her face. “Have you ever been on a date before?”

Saihara feels his face growing warm. “Ah, no, not that I remember.” 

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

“No…”

Then without warning, her composure crumples and she looks to the ground. “But you’ve been in love before.”

It’s not a question. 

“Yumeno-san,” he takes a step towards her. “Is something wrong?”

Her gaze snaps to him. “Do you think you can ever love someone else? Or can you only ever love Akamatsu like…” her voice grows so quiet Saihara has to lean forward to hear her mumble out, “like I can only ever…”

Tenko’s name’s on her lips when she surges forward and presses them to his. It’s over as soon as it began and Saihara can only blink at her. He’s too surprised to even blush. “Y-Yumeno-san?”

She’s already crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks. “Well that was disappointing.” Yumeno begins the walk home anew, and Saihara has to hurry the first few feet to catch up with her. 

He’s still too bewildered to make conversation so the first words spoken between them are Yumeno saying: “Tenko always talked about how excited she was to go to a magic show when we’d get out. She said the only problem was that she wanted to see me perform and watch one with me at the same time.” 

Saihara understands everything. “I see.” 

Yumeno nods and they reach their apartment. “Also I don’t like kissing boys,” she says. “Or at least I don’t like kissing you.”

Saihara doesn’t have a response for that. But later when he discards his hat and she’s unwinding her scarf he says, “By the way, after the piano concert next week, I’m not kissing you.” 

She sticks her tongue out at him. “I’ll turn you into a frog if you try.”

-

Even with Neo-Aikido and astronaut training, Yumeno still has nightmares. Sometimes she wanders out of her bed and sees the lights still burning in the living room or the soft glow of his laptop screen curving around his head. Light means Saihara’s having a night spent in his own head or desperately busying himself to prevent just that. 

She should hate waking up from night terrors to see light, but almost nothing makes her feel more alone than feeling along the walls out of her room and out into the expanse of their dark apartment. In the dark, when she can’t see her own hands, she is nothing and can’t even reach out with the hands she can’t see to grab at her own existence. 

Yumeno has no idea how Saihara manages to do this night after night. 

Her feet begin moving and she finds herself in Saihara’s room, pushing at his shoulder before she can even think about what she’s doing.

He stirs and squints at her in the dark with sleep stained eyes. “‘s it morning?” he grumbles. 

Yumeno gestures for him to move and takes a seat on the side of his bed. “Yeah. Thought I’d give you a wake up call.”

The very notion of her ever doing such a thing is enough to spur Saihara to spare a glance at his alarm clock. “At three in the morning?” 

She slides under the blankets. “Yeah.”

Saihara sits up on his elbows as she lays her head on his pillow. He examines the situation through half-lidded eyes and with a sleep-deprived mind. “You’re… trying to sleep in my bed.”

“Yeah.”

“While I’m still in it.”

“Yeah.” 

He runs a hand through his hair. “Why?” 

Yumeno shrugs. “Felt like it.”

With a sigh, he lies back down. “I’ll make you a deal,” he says. “You tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll show you something.” 

Curiosity begins to take a hold of her. “Show me what?”

“Something I meant to destroy but forgot to,” Saihara’s staring straight up at the ceiling. “And still have for some godforsaken reason.”

She pouts. “Well now you have to tell me what it is.”

“If you tell me the real reason you’re paying me a visit at 3 A.M., sure.”

Yumeno weighs her options then begins to quietly tell him the details of her dream, of how she still sees her friend’s dead bodies and hears Shinguji’s laugh as Tenko screams and she tries to get her out of the cage but the sheet’s too heavy and the bars won’t move and her blood leaks across the floorboards towards her until she soaking in it and she’s sobbing but everyone’s still performing the ritual and the chanting won’t stop even as Tenko sounds so scared as she cries and cries for help. 

Her tears are leaking onto the pillow and then his chest when he pulls her into his arms. Yumeno takes in one shaky breath after another. Then she asks in a small voice: “Do you think about Akamatsu’s death?”

“I do,” he says calmly. “I’ve gone over the first trial so many times, thinking that there had to have been some way for me to figure it all out then and there. If I had been a real detective, I could have stopped the killing game before anyone besides Amami-kun had to die.” He lets out a deep breath. “And I could have saved Kaede.”

“I could’ve saved Tenko,” she mumbles. “It was supposed to be me in the cage.”

He hugs her tighter, and she says “and we could’ve saved Harukawa.” 

When morning finally does come, Saihara asks if she still wants to see what he promised her. 

Yumeno nods, still exhausted from sleep and her own emotions when Saihara pulls a photograph out of the very bottom of his desk, and, after a moment of hesitation, places it in her hands. 

He prefaces doing so with, “This is the weirdest picture I needed to get rid of.” 

She has to blink to clear her eyes several times before she’s able to take in the sight of Saihara posing in front of his mirror and wearing the same outfit—skirt and all—as the purple haired girl she remembers being on the posters all over the walls of his old room. 

Yumeno looks up open mouthed at his now bright red face. She turns the photo towards him, jabs a finger at it and begins laughing and laughing and laughing until he swipes it out of her hands.

-

There have been three trials in Maki’s game so far. One killing in self-defense followed by two double murders. Half the students are dead, and the chosen protagonist of the season looks noticeably less cheery after having to condemn her friend the arsonist to his fiery pyre. 

Yumeno hums. “Guess he wasn’t the mastermind. So,” she stretches out over the couch, resting her head in Saihara’s lap, “it has to be the serial killer, right?”

“You’re still hung-up on that?”

“What’ll you give me if I’m right?” She’s playing with her deck of cards, shuffling and spinning them between her hands as the teenagers on Saihara’s laptop talk about hope. 

“I’ll give you every possession I own,” he says.

Without a pause in her shuffling, she looks up at him. “You’re confident. Detective’s intuition?”

“No,” he turns up the volume so the chatter can be heard over Yumeno’s playing cards. “I’ve just studied the show a lot. The serial killer’s going to die this time. I guarantee it.”

She puffs out her checks. They watch the show with little more conversation other than Yumeno occasionally asking him to pick a card. 

The hulking body of the serial killer is found dead by three people—Maki among them—before the commercial break. Yumeno looks at the screen and then up at him and back again. “How did you know?”

Saihara shrugs. “The show likes its patterns.” 

With a huff, she sits up. “Who’s the killer then?”

He pauses, putting a hand to his chin. The students begin their investigation, and after a moment, Saihara says, “I want to see how they act in the trial, but it’s between the marksman and the sword-swallower.” He narrows his eyes, carefully examining the figures on screen as they examine the body. “Maybe the spy… but I’m pretty sure it’s the sword-swallower.”

Yumeno pulls a face. “Why would you ever risk being executed with a talent like that?”

Saihara grimaces. “If it is her… let’s just not watch the execution. I hope I’m wrong, but…” the sword-swallower begins pointing fingers at Maki to end the episode on a dramatic cliffhanger, “I’m not wrong.”

-

After a long moment of contemplation, Saihara finally decides that they have it in their budget for him to buy a few new novels in addition to a greatly needed cookbook. He’s inspecting the covers of the mysteries, and Yumeno’s flipping through magazines when she suddenly gasps.

He looks over her shoulder and she points a finger to the gossip article’s headline. “Why didn’t you tell me you have a drinking problem?” She asks. 

Saihara smiles wryly and takes the magazine from her hands to get a look at it himself. “And why didn’t you tell me you did an interview about my drinking problem?”

“Oh, I did?” she stands on tiptoes to get a second view. “What did I say?” 

He shakes his head and hands it back to her, quickly scanning the words the columnist put in her mouth. Yumeno tugs on his sleeve. “Hey, give me your phone. I wanna take a picture.”

Saihara does as requested, but asks, “You don’t have yours with you?”

“No,” she says not looking up from her picture taking. “I realized the only thing I used it for was texting you. And you’re always with me, so…” she shrugs. “Didn’t see the point anymore.” 

She’s says it with such nonchalance, but Saihara realizes the statement sends him reeling. When she hands his phone back to him, he discreetly looks at his contacts behind the cover of a novel and dumbly notes the name of the only person he’s used it to communicate with in almost a year. The only person he’s had a real conversation with in almost a year: Yumeno Himiko. 

Standing in the bookstore, Saihara begins to comprehend just how much their world has shrunk since being freed from the cage.

-

They’re forced to go to DanganRonpa’s anniversary convention. Yumeno remembers a time when they had contemplated going to a fan gathering only a few weeks after the game ended. They had since learned their lesson about attempting to leave their apartment to go to general, public locations without their makeshift disguises. Going anywhere where mass quantities of fans would be was just inviting them to be trampled. Going anywhere in the clothes she had worn in the killing game made her want to be. 

The idea of attending makes Yumeno’s stomach churn, and she looks to Saihara who’s carefully reading over the exact wording of their invitation. 

“It’s not a choice,” she grumbles. “Is it?”

He puts down the letter with a sign. “No, it’s not. We’re contractually obligated, and,” he runs a hand through his hair. “We’re living off their money.”

They arrive quietly through a backdoor at a convention center, swarms of people dressed in the colorful clothes of their dead friends already pushing and shoving to get in. 

Whenever they’d go out, Saihara would put on his hat and Yumeno would take off hers. Backstage, a stylist literally rips Saihara’s hat off his head and throws it across the room. Yumeno’s already arguing on his behalf when an exact replica of hers is shoved into her arms. The rest of their uniforms are handed to them, and even though she knows it will be a few minutes at most to change, the idea of being separated from Saihara by members of Team DanganRonpa sends pure terror running through every muscle in her body.

He’s gone pale and is being pulled away from her by the stylist who took off his hat, when Yumeno drops her clothes to cling to his arm. Saihara looks down at her and says, relief tinting his voice at her rescue, “Yumeno-san…”

The stylist sneers and says, “Listen, you little brat—”

Saihara interrupts. “We can share a dressing room.”

The stylist pulls a face and gives a sidelong glance at Yumeno’s iron grip on Saihara’s arm. They get their way and are escorted to a room to stand in opposite corners surrounded by wardrobe people and makeup people and hair people to change into the outfits they wore when they became someone else. 

They stare at each other in their old clothing for the first time since leaving the game. 

Yumeno looks at Saihara in his black and white uniform and thinks how much he looks like a prisoner. She clicks her curled shoes together, and he gives her a pained, reassuring smile. 

“I asked one of the makeup artists,” he says when they’re alone, being forced to hurry up and wait. “Apparently all we have to do is sit at a booth, sign things and take pictures with fans. They don’t trust us enough to go up in front of a live crowd for the panels.”

“Smart move,” she says and leans her head against his shoulder. She frowns. “I think they used too much hairspray.”

He laughs. “Yeah,” he reaches up and rubs the strand of hair that stands straight up at the part in his hair between his fingers. “Me, too.” 

A nearby makeup artist tuts at them, jerking her head to silently tell Yumeno to stop mussing her carefully styled hair in her efforts to seek comfort from Saihara. 

She complies with a huff. “We just have to sit at a booth, right?”

He nods.

“And they’ll feed us?”

He nods again.

Yumeno leans back in her chair and places her hat over her face. “Wake me up when we have to go.”

The makeup artist tuts again at the movement. Yumeno lets out an exaggerated sigh. 

Time passes, Yumeno isn’t able to have her nap, and security guards show them to a private room with a line of people already stretching down the convention center’s long corridor and around the corner. They take a seat next to each other in uncomfortable folding chairs behind a long table, and the first fans enter the room, armed with posters and T-shirts with Saihara’s face printed on them. 

He tries to smile as they gush about how he has to be the coolest detective in the show’s history. It isn’t the worst first interaction they could have had. The next fan is an older man who calls Yumeno a loli. Then a group of girls who giggle about how cute Saihara looks when he cries. And a girl in Tenko’s old uniform who asks Yumeno for a hug with another younger girl dressed in an Ouma-style straightjacket who wants a picture with Saihara. 

They keep coming, one after another, and Yumeno squeezes Saihara’s hand under the table when a couple comes in dressed like Momota and Maki, rambling about how excited they are to see her again on her new season.

And there are so, so many Kaedes. 

Yumeno saves him from a particularly aggressive one who wants a kiss. “You’ll have to kiss me, too,” she says with the flattest tone of voice she can manage. “That’s the rule.”

The girl laughs in a poor attempt to hide her obvious irritation. She glances at their security guards who haven’t so much as blinked at any interaction, including the ones who came baring very real looking prop knives. They neither confirm nor deny Yumeno’s statement. She twists her face into a smile, pushing the blonde hair of her wig behind her shoulder. “I’ll just have a hug then.”

When she leaves, Yumeno turns to Saihara to mutter something dark about the girl, but he has a strange, faraway look on his face. He says in a small voice. “I was her once, you know. Before the game,” he looks down at his hands in lap, “that was me.”

But he’s not allowed to have a breakdown now because the next fans are already at their table, asking for signatures on pictures of old contestants neither of them have even seen before. 

A few come in with video cameras to record Saihara saying lines from the trials or Yumeno mumbling about her MP. One man comes in and asks about Maki. 

There’s a younger girl with him—no older than ten—who shoves posters of the pink haired girl Shirogane claimed to be at them for signatures while he points the camera at them and, asks “So how would you play the game differently if you had to do it again? Like, what would you say to Harukawa if you could give her advice about her current season?”

Saihara answers first as Yumeno busies herself with signing another poster. “Ah, those are two different questions,” he answers honestly. “I know now that… the right way to play a killing game is to not.”

The young girl claps her hands. “Isn’t that what Ouma-chan said?”

Saihara winces. “I… suppose it is.”

The man doesn’t like that answer. “How about my second question? What would you say to Harukawa about her game if she were here?” 

“I’d say,” Saihara says, searching for the words. “I’d say… that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to make another choice that day.”

Yumeno’s looking down at the table. “Me, too. I’d say that I miss her, and I want to see her again. I’d tell her that she can come live with us when her game’s over.” 

The man shrugs. “If she gets out of her game.”

Saihara frowns. “ _When_ Harukawa-san escapes her game, we’ll be here waiting for her. We don’t want her to do anything reckless or risk being executed, but when she does escape… we’ll be here for her.”

Yumeno nods with a fierce determination. “We’ll wait as long as it takes, and we will see her again.”

The girl smiles brightly. “I hope so! Then I can get another signature on my poster next year!” 

Their spirits rallied high by Maki’s memory fade when they’re forced to remember where they are again. 

More fans come in. One of them is dressed like Shinguji. Saihara squeezes Yumeno’s hand. 

-

Saihara’s washing dishes one night when Yumeno walks into the kitchen holding one of his books. “Can I borrow this, Shuuichi?”

He nearly drops the dish he’s holding, but manages to say, “Yes?” after opening and closing his mouth a few times. 

Yumeno nods, staring hard at the cover of the detective novel. “Thanks. Also,” she turns so he sees her slightly reddened face in profile, “I’m going to call you Shuuichi now.”

He puts down the plate he nearly destroyed and leans against the counter. “A-alright, do you, ah,” he blushes. “Do you want me to call you Himiko?”

She pulls her hat down over her eyes. “Yeah, I do.”

-

Watching Shuuichi watch the trials is an experience. “The first person to bring up the frame job immediately becomes the most suspicious,” he says as the poor doomed sword-swallower does just that. “Either they’re an innocent person who thinks they’re smarter than they are or they’re the culprit with nothing else to hide behind.” 

“What’s her plan when they prove it’s all fake?” Himiko asks.

“I don’t think she has one,” he says. “In fact, I think she’s panicking pretty badly right now.” 

Himiko narrows her eyes at the image of the culprit matter-of-factually going over all of the planted evidence that leads to Maki, trying to see what Shuuichi does. She purses her lips, then says, “So when you look at a crime scene, everything just becomes geometry or shapes that you can fit together, right? Or like little pop-up details appear over stuff and they link to other stuff? Is that how detectives see things?”

He laughs. “Uh, not quite. You just learn what to look for after a while.” Shuuichi furrows his brow. “I know it was called a talent—and I’m sure it is for some people—but I remember doing a lot of work to be remotely good at any of it.” 

“And then after all the work everything became geometry?” 

Shuuichi smiles in response, then calmly says over the debating contestants, “The marksman’s guessing randomly, but they’re right about the timing not making any sense.” 

The protagonist shouts: “I agree with that!” a minute later. 

Himiko puts a finger to her chin. “Her story’s going to fall apart pretty quickly now, huh?” 

Shuuichi nods. “I almost feel bad for her.”

“I’d feel worse if she wasn’t framing Harukawa.” 

“Me, too.” Because even though they know all the students are like them—were one season away from being them—the six people with Maki in the court are the only things standing between her and freedom. 

The sword-swallower challenges the protagonist girl to a one-on-one debate because she’s quickly running out of options. Shuuichi listens quietly, then responds, “she’s wrong about no one seeing Harukawa-san before the incident. The spy’s testimony proves it.” 

His words are parroted a moment later. Himiko pulls her knees up to her chest. “I’m glad we had someone like you during our game,” she leans against his side. “Figuring out murder cases is exhausting.” 

Shuuichi smiles, then to his laptop screen, “That’s wrong. More than one of the axes was missing before the investigation.”

Himiko says, “I’m gonna try the next one.”

The trial goes on. The culprit is found, and Shuuichi and Himiko fast-forward through the execution once Monokuma presses the button to drag them away. 

The episode isn’t over though, which they both find a bit strange. Instead they watch as the remaining contestants go through the next morning, begin to explore the new parts of the school, and are handed their fifth motive. 

Monokuma says to the six people standing before him that this one is “An old classic that he meant to use earlier.” He scratches the back of his robotic head and informs them that he had to wait for some of last footage but that it was well worth it. 

Too familiar looking video pads are passed out.

“Is this like what happened in our game?” Himiko asks. “Except he’s actually giving them to the right people?”

Shuuichi is frowning. “Looks like it… but they’re nearing the end of the game,” he bites his lip. “Why are they doing this now?”

The contestants lie to each other that they’re going to stand together and not watch their tapes before going about the rest of their day. 

The episode seems to reach its logical conclusion with the protagonist heading to her room for the night when there’s a hard cut to the cameras in Maki’s room. 

Shuuichi and Himiko are stunned into absolute silence. 

She’s sitting on her bed staring down Monokuma in front of her. “What do you want?” her words ring out from Shuuichi’s grainy laptop speakers and fill their entire apartment. 

The bear giggles. “Oh, I just remembered there’s something extra that comes with your video.” He holds out a remembering light towards her. “You’d be awfully confused watching that video without it.”

Maki regards him warily but snatches it out of his hand and turns it on. When it’s worked its magic, she nearly throws it across the room in her efforts to leap towards her motive video. 

The camera cuts again, and Maki’s video fills the screen. The darkness changes to a shaky, handheld camera and ambient noise of hundreds of people talking and milling about hums in the background. In the foreground, a voice behind the camera says, “What would you say to Harukawa if you could give her advice about her current season?” 

Shuuichi and Himiko have never been so horrified to see their own faces. 

Himiko is pale and in a near state of shock when she mumbles out, “He wasn’t a fan…”

Shuuichi is shaking—not with tears and grief as he had been so many times before, but with rage. “They used us. They never stopped using us to hurt each other.” His hands clench into fists. “They’re using us right now.” 

They hear themselves say how much they miss her, how much they want her to live, how much they want her to escape and come see them. The video fades out, and the camera cuts back to the image of Maki clutching the pad in her room. 

Monokuma appears to taunt her. “Sooooo what’d you think?”

“This is real, right?” she says, her voice deathly quiet, not raising a single decibel as she says: “If you and your team faked this, I will dedicate the rest of my life to killing every last one of you.” 

“Of course it’s real!” he snaps. “Would I lie to you? Oh, wait.” He giggles. 

Maki’s having none of his games. Her voice suddenly spikes to a yell. “Is it real or not?”

“It is! It is! Okay! Sheesh!” The bear sighs and disappears saying, “Some people just can’t appreciate a good motive.” 

Maki turns and walks straight to the camera in her room, looking directly into its lens. She narrows her eyes as something dark and dangerous creeps over her features. “Team DanganRonpa: you heard what I said. If this is a lie, I will find you. I will find you all and make you understand the pain of every person you have executed for your sick game.” 

She takes a breath, and her face softens. “Saihara. Yumeno. I will see you again.” The screen fades out to black and Maki’s words play over the darkness, “I will escape.” 

The episode ends on a real cliffhanger this time. 

-

Team DanganRonpa had given them a limousine ride to the studio when they first left the cage behind. 

Himiko had sat in the back and looked at the empty seats stretched out before her and thought about how every single part of her was so, so exhausted. She wanted everything to just stop and let her sleep until the world faded with her exhaustion. But she had thirteen friends to mourn. Tenko wouldn’t let her shirk that responsibility. 

Shuuichi had sat next to her and thought about how almost all of the only people he actually knew were real were dead. They were all made out of lies, but they existed so fully in the only memories he knew weren’t implanted into his brain by a team of T.V. producers. He had no idea and no will to figure out what to believe in any more. But Kaede wouldn’t be happy with him if he just accepted that.

They sat in the back of a limousine that could fit sixteen. And the only thing pushing them forward was their love for two dead girls who never existed. 

Himiko leaned against Shuuichi. “I’m so tired… I’m so tired of everything.”

He tilted his head to rest on hers. There was still confetti in her hair. “Me, too.”

Maybe there was one other thing pushing them forward, even if neither of them could see it yet.

\- 

One night when Himiko wakes up in darkness, she hears Akamatsu Kaede’s voice coming from their living room. 

She feels her way along the walls, listening to the dead girl talk about not being afraid to fight against the truth over the sounds of a descending elevator. 

She spies Shuuichi sitting at their dining table with the lights off, circled in a halo of the glow from his laptop screen. He doesn’t notice her and nearly jumps when she presses her hand to his shoulder. 

He pulls down his bulky headphones and realizes his mistake. 

Himiko says, “I think your speakers are broken. Sound’s playing through them and your headphones.” 

She doesn’t mention how up close she can see the tear tracks running down his cheeks, illuminated by the radiance of the video of Kaede’s pretty face. Himiko thinks about how he’s going to carry her with him for the rest of his life, but she doesn’t mention that either. Shuuichi mumbles, “I didn’t wake you, did I?” and shuts his laptop. 

“Nah,” then, despite the drowsiness still running through her limbs she says, “Wanna do some more middle of the night-training?” 

He nods in assent, and Himiko suffers through sit-ups till Shuuichi calls it quits and carries her back to her room with the sun peeking through their windows. 

In his arms, she says, “What was that song Akamatsu liked?”

His face is stained with the glow of the early morning sun, and his arms and voice are weak but he still carries her and he still manages to say, “Clair de Lune.”

She nuzzles her face against his chest. “You should play it for me sometime, Shuuichi.”

He places her in her bed and says, “Goodnight, Himiko,” with the gentlest smile even as morning greets the world around them. Shuuichi lingers in her doorframe. He says, “I’m glad you’re here,” and she falls asleep. 

-

Maki spends almost the entirety of the next episode planning a murder. It’s elaborate and confusing with layers of misdirects and false evidence. Then she throws it all out because she was given more than just her motive video. She thinks of her last killing game and remembers that the specifics, the complications, and the absurdities meant to stump the others is what gives the culprits away. 

She strips everything away and plans a crime as anonymous as possible. 

Himiko and Shuuichi are stuck watching the protagonist’s perspective and are left to guess what Maki’s planning. Shuuichi knows Maki and knows she’s going to kill someone. The only question is who she picks. He prays she’s smart and targets someone who knows what they’re doing at the trials, just like every night in their game he secretly prayed no one wised up and tried to murder him rather than risk being found out by the Ultimate Detective. With a target like that on his back, Shuuichi can only think back and marvel that he made it to the end.

There is very little of Maki in the episode. Himiko shifts uncomfortably beside him. There are five minutes left in the run time and everyone is still alive. 

The protagonist goes to her bedroom when night falls, a scene that usually signals the end of the episode. Then there’s a time skip to the middle of the night to show her being woken up by a knock on her door. 

She gets up, crosses her room to the door, and opens it to reveal Maki sheepishly standing outside her room. Maki says, “I’m sorry to bother you so late, but,” she plays with her hair, “I couldn’t sleep so I started investigating the school, and I think I found something.”

That’s a lie.

Himiko and Shuuichi know there is only one way this can go. 

They prepare themselves to watch Maki kill someone on T.V.

The protagonist says, “Really?”

Maki nods. “Can I come in? I’d like to talk about it in private.” She glances down both halls to make her point. “I’m afraid that there’s not many people here I trust.” 

The protagonist steps aside to let her in. She closes the door behind them and begins to walk past Maki to sit on her bed, still weary from sleep. The moment her back is to Maki, her fate is sealed. 

Maki grabs her by the shoulder, and in one swift motion pulls out the kitchen knife she had hidden in her assassin’s cloak and sweeps it across her neck. The girl’s dead almost instantly, letting out one last chocked sound before falling to the ground, her blood pooling out on to the ground, bright against her bubblegum pink hair. 

Maki regards the body coolly, drops the knife and leaves the room without closing the door to ensure the body’s discovery in the morning. 

It’s as straightforward and as anonymous as a crime can be. 

A victim who would let anyone into her room, killed with a weapon anyone could have taken, at a time when no one has an alibi. 

Neither of them says a word as the credits for the episode roll. Finally, Himiko speaks up. “Is there anything that could lead back to her?” 

Shuuichi thinks hard. “As long as…” he says, “as long as no one saw her take the knife—which I assume she did right before the murder… as long as there are no witnesses or anyone secretly decided to set up anything that would record the hallway outside the bedrooms…” 

He closes his eyes and racks his brain for anything that could possibly implicate Maki over the others. The timing of the crime. The choice of victim. The method of the murder. Anything she said earlier. Anything the others knew about her motive. “I think…” he says after a long moment. “I think she has a chance.”

-

Shuuichi stares up at the ceiling of his room. Himiko’s crawled into bed with him again. She came into his room right before he was about to leave to spend the rest of the night pacing their apartment. There are too many thoughts running through his head for him to be so still. 

She’s on the verge of sleep when he says, “Is this what they wanted for us?”

“Is what what who wanted?” she mumbles half into his pillow.

“Is this,” he says. “Is this what Kaede and Momota-kun wanted me to do? Is this what they wanted when they gave up their lives for me to keep going?” 

Himiko is silent. 

“When Kaede entrusted her will to me,” Shuuichi says, “to save everyone… is this what she wanted me to do with it? To spend the rest of my life…” 

Himiko shifts her head to rest on his chest. His heart beats rhythmically against the quiet of the night. “I think,” she says slowly once she feels his breaths even and his broken heart calm. “She’d want you to sleep, and talk about it with your friend Himiko in the morning.” Then because she knows he’s about to protest, she adds, “I also think she’d want you to stop blaming yourself for everything.” She wraps one of her arms around him. “I want you to stop blaming yourself for everything.”

Shuuichi does not respond but rests one of his hands on top of hers. 

Himiko says, “And now I use the last of my MP to cast a sleep spell on you that won’t wear off till morning. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“‘Night, Shuuichi.”

“Goodnight.”

He doesn’t dream that night, and awakens to Himiko trying to eat breakfast in his bed while he sleeps into the early afternoon.

Maybe she really is magic.

-

On her eighteenth birthday—at least they think it’s her eighteenth and they think it’s her birthday—Shuuichi tries to bake a cake.

Himiko’s exiled from the kitchen until he’s done in some semblance of having some part of her birthday be a surprise. She sits at the dining table, playing with her deck of cards, occasionally shouting him to think of a number for her to guess. 

It’s a nice, still day of normality. Shuuichi’s trying his best to be upbeat because birthdays are supposed to be happy. Himiko’s cards fly past her face from one hand to the other, and she idly thinks about how much older they’ll grow than everyone else. 

She knows Shuuichi will never move past Kaede, and she’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. She wonders if she wants to move past Tenko. And she catches herself observing that question with such a detached, unemotional lens that her hand slips and the cards fly across the table and on to the floor.

Shuuichi pokes his head out of the kitchen to see her on her hands and knees picking up the cards and trying not to be angry at herself and then getting angry for trying to bottle up her anger. 

“Is everything alright?” He asks.

Himiko answers automatically. “Yeah, everything’s fi—” she bites down her words. “Everything’s…” there are tears beginning to form in her eyes, and it takes all of her energy not to push them back down. “I miss everyone.”

Shuuichi’s kneeling on the ground next to her and she throws her arms around his neck. 

He holds her and she lets herself go limp in his arms, sobbing into his shoulder. “I don’t want to forget everyone… but we need to move on—we need t-to…”

They stay on the floor, surrounded by Himiko’s playing cards. Her crying gradually fades in and out in swells before subsiding into scattered hiccups. Shuuichi doesn’t let go. She mumbles into his neck, “I don’t know what to feel anymore. I want to stop being sad, but I don’t want to forget. You know?”

She feels him nod. “I do. You shouldn’t be afraid of those feelings, but you also don’t need to let yourself be consumed by them… you just need—”

The oven timer goes off. Himiko finally blinks up at him. “I just need to eat some cake?”

Shuuichi smiles. “I think that’s a good first step for now.”

He offers his hand and pulls her to her feet. She doesn’t let go and trails after him into the kitchen. Shuuichi doesn’t offer a word of complaint when she forces him to remove her slightly burned cake from the oven one-handed as she plays with his fingers. 

He looks over his work. “It’s, ah, it’s not perfect, but… well,” he looks down at her. “It’s a nice first try?”

She stands on her toes to get a better look at the still cooling cake. “I can help with the next one.” 

Shuuichi raises his eyebrows. “Another cake?”

“Yup,” she says pulling him over to the cookbook splayed out on the kitchen counter. “It should be two layers because there’re two of us.”

The second layer is slightly undercooked, but they haphazardly stack the two on top of each other and Shuuichi does his best to cover it in the frosting Himiko doesn’t eat straight out of the bowl. 

He doesn’t trust himself to have a steady enough hand to spell out words so he says them aloud. “Happy birthday, Himiko.”

She spends the rest of the day lazily eating cake and doing card tricks and offers Shuuichi verbal encouragement while he cleans the kitchen the two of them have finally started regularly using. 

-

The fifth trial is starting and the contestants are directionless. 

There are four people standing between Maki and freedom. One of them is the studio mastermind. The other three are innocent people who can’t remember volunteering to die on T.V.

Maki regards them warily, but not overly warily. She is so close and absolutely cannot slip up now. Saihara and Yumeno are waiting for her. 

The spy coughs. “Uh, I guess we could start with the murder weapon? It was a kitchen knife so… it probably came from the kitchen, and, uh…”

If she doesn’t contribute at all to the discussion, she’ll draw suspicion to herself. So she says, “Does that connect to anyone?”

“Ah, well,” he scratches the back of his head. “Maybe someone saw the killer take it?”

“For a spy,” says one of the brasher contestants, “you sure have been crappy about monitoring everyone.”

“D-do you want me to fucking breathe down your necks and follow you around everywhere!?”

“Waaah! What a strong reaction!”

They argue. Maki thinks about the mistakes all the previous killers she had seen executed before her made. She can do this.

Without the forger there to guide the conversation, the trial quickly devolves into the others randomly flinging accusations. Some of them are directed at Maki, but mostly they’re directed at everyone. 

Monokuma is getting angry. The mess before her cannot be good for ratings. “This is a trial, and I will have order in my court!” he gestures vaguely with his paws. “Talk about the case! About the details or it is EX-E-CUTION!”

The marksman looks at him hopelessly. “But what is there to talk about? This—” he points towards the portrait of their dead leader. “Anyone could have done this!” 

Her crime was effective but it does not make for good television. 

Maki can’t get complacent now. “We can’t give up though,” she says calmly. “Unless we all want to die.”

The spy huffs and crosses his arms. “Except for the killer, that is.”

In the periphery of her hearing she hears someone say, “You know you’ve been acting awful suspicious since this trial began.” 

She turns her head to see the same brash contestant now slinging accusations at her. “Me?” she asks.

“Yes, you!” they answer. “C’mon guys, little miss assassin’s never this helpful, right?”

The spy rubs their chin. “Yeah… and y’know, an assassin would make the most sense to commit a secret murder, right?”

Maki glares at them. “Says the spy.”

They wave their hands quickly. “Spy’s don’t always kill people! They usually just watch them!”

Maki rolls her eyes. “That being said, there is no reason to suspect me over anyone else, regardless of my talent.”

“But,” says the marksman. “That’s not really a defense, is it? It still could have been you.”

“It could have been anyone,” Maki says with too finality. 

“But not just anyone’s the Ultimate Assassin,” her first accuser declares. 

Maki keeps her words few and clipped because they have no real proof other than their own speculation to propel them forward. But with a common enemy, they work together too well, even without their sunbeam leader, and when Monokuma calls for a vote, Maki knows that all the people who have died for her to make it this far have been meaningless. 

She isn’t surprised when she sees the four tallied votes next to her name. She squeezes her eyes shut and Monokuma swings his gavel, and Maki is finally freed from the cycle she signed herself up for so long ago. 

And the execution hurts as all manner of creative poisons and weapons spark pure jolts of pain through her body until she finds herself on her hands and knees with her long hair spiraling out from her pretty pigtails as the blade of the guillotine above her begins to fall. 

It stops an inch before her neck, before slowly retreating back up, and bloodied and bruised and thoroughly defeated, Maki looks to where she imagines the camera documenting her suffering should be. She stares at it hard and fights to keep staring even as a poison tipped crossbow bolt fires from some unknown places and buries itself in her back. 

Maki falls to the ground then, but forces her bleary eyes to stay locked on the camera even as the world fills with stars. 

The other contestants applaud themselves for making it through another trial, even without their leader because the cycle of hope and despair continues for them. 

The light leaves Maki’s eyes and her dead stares still lingers, staring at some place far, far away. 

In their apartment, Shuuichi’s gone completely silent, curling in on himself and refusing to respond to anything. So Himiko’s trembling fingers are the ones that close the video. She presses her face against his sleeve to half dry the tears liberally pouring from her tired eyes. 

Shuuichi suddenly surges forward and she finds herself held tightly in the arms of the only person she has left.

-

And time goes on.

They stop watching the season, but mumbled small talk around them brings news that hope has won yet again, and isn’t that just the greatest thing? 

One night, when Shuuichi’s in the shower and Himiko has the privacy she’s never really needed before, she looks up the final interviews for the brand new winners of DanganRonpa. Two emotionally broken teens sit uncomfortably on a couch and stare into the camera with eyes almost as dead as Maki’s. 

They answer questions about their talents and their dead friends and what on earth they’re going to do with the rest of their lives after going through such an amazing opportunity. One of them just whispers, “I don’t know. I don’t know…”

The other looks at the floor, and says, “Everything sucks.”

Himiko hears the shower turn off and hurriedly closes down the video because she knows that for all of his kindness, Shuuichi has no sympathy for the people who killed their last remaining friend to save themselves. 

She busies herself looking at fansites and when Shuuichi eventually shuffles back into the living room with wet hair and bare feet, Himiko offers, “Some fans are holding a memorial for Harukawa.”

Shuuichi is silent. 

She tries, “They say Kiibo will be there. He’s gonna… talk about his comeback in season 55.”

And Shuuichi says, “We should go see him.” 

Himiko looks up at him with big eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he replies, calmly sitting next to her. “Here, help me think up some ways we can kidnap him.”

Himiko smiles, and they spend the afternoon imagining all the things they would do if they really were filled with as much hope as everyone says they are. 

-

They carve out a corner of the world, and more seasons go by, and less people recognize them, and they continue forward. 

And everything is still painful and that’s okay, and they stagger forward—holding each other up—into the rest of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, after months, here is finally my magnum opus that I've had in the works for too long, haha. I actually wrote out two different endings for this fic, and I might post the alternate "Maki lives" ending as a bonus chapter at some point in the future. 
> 
> And, of course, thank you to everyone for reading!


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